Painted Bike Lanes Are Atrocious & Here's How to Fix Them
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 ก.พ. 2022
- People who have watched Not Just Bikes has probably heard the phrase "Painted Bike Gutter" be used to describe the bike lanes found across North America. These design patterns are uncomfortable and hostile. Design standards should look towards The Netherlands to create safer, more inviting bike infrastructure.
Sources:
Nevada DOT Bicycle FAQ: www.dot.nv.gov/Home/ShowDocum...
RTC Pedestrian Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan: rtcwashoe.wpengine.com/wp-con...
Monash University More than a stripe of paint needed to keep cyclists safe: www.monash.edu/news/articles/...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
Sharrows Give People a False Sense of Security: www.bloomberg.com/news/articl...
NACTO High-Quality Bike Facilities Increase Ridership and Make Biking Safer: nacto.org/2016/07/20/high-qua...
NACTO Equitable bike share means building better places for people to ride: nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/...
Cycling for Sustainable Cities: mitpress.mit.edu/books/cyclin...
BicycleDutch Junction design, the Dutch - cycle-friendly - way: • Junction design, the D...
CROW Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic: crowplatform.com/product/desi...
Cheddar Bike Lanes Have A Deadly Design Flaw - Cheddar Explains: • Bike Lanes Have A Dead...
Additional Reading/Viewing:
Well There's Your Problem | Episode 96: John Forester & Vehicular Cycling: • Well There's Your Prob...
Massachusetts Separated Bike Lane Planning & Design Guide: www.mass.gov/lists/separated-...
You made it to the bottom of the sources. All I have left is to share my Twitter: / yurbanist
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i find ironic whenever an American (yes I only find this argument used by americans) opposes having separate infrastructure dedicated to bikes (or public transport) on the ground of taxes. the argument goes "I pay taxes for the road while bike don't, they should either pay and be insured or not be getting anything at all" and really... considering how low US taxes, especially on fuel, and how rare toll roads are, one would think they would know better.
Brits and Canadians make the same argument
@@stopmotiontacos have been commenting under British videos for a while now and taxes never came up... they did whenever speaking of the EU but that is beside the point
It also ignores that many cyclists are also drivers. Which means many cyclists *are* paying those same taxes, while keeping that car at home and decreasing congestion and road wear. Even before one considers how cyclists obviously pay a slew of other taxes (just like pedestrians, who rightfully are also afforded infrastructure) while also not damaging roads nearly as much as other road users.
And yeah, sadly it's not just an American argument, it exists in some segments of various European national conversations as well. Certainly, I've met a lot of other Britons who've made similar noises, along with several from various countries on the continent, so sadly it remains a part of some anti-cyclists repertoire, despite beings nonsense.
dont worry, brits come up with this kind of bollocks too
The counter argument to the taxes complaint is fairly simple: investments in safe bike infrastructure have a positive financial effect for a society.
“Paint is not infrastructure.” AMEN! I think municipalities add these painted bike gutters because they’re inexpensive and every mile of “bike lane” counts toward the “bicycle friendly” designation.
Honestly any stroad with a sidewalk is better off just declaring the sidewalk the bike lane, its not like anyone is actually walking on it. (Because stroads are terrible, but atleast some forms are acceptable, mainly the 1 lane each way plus shared left turn lane is the safest form of stroad)
Yes, the raters have to quit coddling the towns/cities with inflated scores.
@@jasonreed7522 you're telling me that preposterous both ways left turn lane is actually safe??
@@blanco7726
Yes it is.
When you prepare to enter the center turn lane you can easily see if there's anyone in it so there's little chance of accidentally running into someone coming the other way. Since you're already planning to use the center lane, your attention is actually focused on the lane.
And it pretty well eliminates the problem of being rear ended by sleeping drivers when you try to make a left from a regular lane.
Because the accident rate is so much lower and the delays of someone waiting in a traffic lane to make a turn are eliminated, the capacity of a "one plus center plus one" is about the same as a conventional "two in each direction" street.
@@JustClaude13 makes more sense to me to have individual turning lanes for every exit (or a group of exits being linked by backroad with only one turning lane on the road). And you'd alternate, for 50 meters you got a left turn lane going south, for the next 30m a lane going north and so on, adapted to where the biggest exits are.
The whole idea of two cars potentially turning into the lane at the same time shocks me lol. In Belgium there's a few stroads in the sticks, middle of nowhere mostly and they have individual turning lanes in the middle for every larger business. And the rest of the center space is often striped floor which you could use to get to smaller places (even if illegal).
I crossed Canada on my bike using these stupid bike lanes the whole length: I can tell you that your critic is very well articulated and absolutely correct.
Epic adventure 👏
did you at least use the TransCanada Trail a little bit?
@@mena376 The Transcanadian is the only way to travel trough Canada on a bicycle, so if I wasn't on a bike bath, I was on the TC for sure.
@@NicholasLittlejohn Yeah I get nostalgic a lot when I think about it. It's been 10 years and I remember almost everything, and memory works with relevancy, so that's how much these types of things are important for us.
@@fl260 The Trans Canada Trail IS a bike path. No cars.
Another problem with painted bike gutters, especially in a denser, urban area, is that inevitably cars will illegally park in them, forcing us bikes to move into a live motor vehicle lane to get around them. That ends up being more dangerous than if there were no bike gutter at all. It is a very frequent occurrence, a transgression that police seem unable or unwilling to enforce.
This was especially dangerous for me when I was commuting on a bike. I passed by a high school and some parents would use the bike lane as a loading zone, sometimes pulling in front of me and stopping to let their kids out. In one instance, they stopped fast enough that I had half a mind to run into the back of their car because it would have been safer than dodging into the vehicular travel lane.
@@TimothyGaetke Please tell the principal
@@NicholasLittlejohn This was a decade ago and I didn't attend that high school. I don't know who the principal is or was.
@@NicholasLittlejohn I’ve done that and there’s zero response. We need infrastructure that self enforced by making it impossible for drivers to park or drive within space that should be for people biking.
@@TimothyGaetke if they built the bike lane, they could have put some kind of curb or separation so a car couldn’t get over to park then that would’ve solved the problem.
I was nearly killed on one. I'll never use a painted bike lane next to traffic ever again.
Having ridden as a vehicle for the last 67 years I can comment that the problem has got worse over the years. It isn't just that there are more cars, nor even that the cars move faster.
Cars require parking. With more cars there is more parking making the existing roads ever narrower while needing to carry more. Those parked cars swing open doors with negligent abandon notwithstanding laws. But the WORST feature is the change in attitude "roads exist for cars (only)" which did not apply when I was young. That attitude permeates every aspect of road use including road laws and enforcement.
Plus, plenty of clowns have trucks and SUVs that won’t fit in their garages. Or the garage if full of crap they buy.
A street I walk my dog on has 36 houses, each with at least a two-car garage. There are 26-31 vehicles parked in driveways or on the street every morning. And, no surprise, they attract thieves who break into them or more rarely steal the vehicle. Where I live, a bear is occasionally the thief…going after the french fries that dropped on the floor.
IMO we should do what Japan does, and require you have a private parking space big enough for your vehicle before you can even buy/ register it, and ban almost all street parking. If a homeless person wants to store their property in a parking space the city throws their stuff out, but if you have it in a metal box suddenly it’s ok to store it on public property?
You know what really ENFORCES the "cars are just for roads" mentality? Bike lanes. I've literally had someone scream "get on the BIKE ROAD" because they thought I should only be riding in a bike lane, and not in traffic.
Pedestrians used to have priority on streets when cars first came around, until the Auto lobby changed that and termed derogatory words (such as jaywalking, jay meaning rube) to delegitimize interests of people.
I appreciate this video as a civil engineer. The only thing holding us back is the lack of DOT's spending money to update their standards. So adding good bike infrastructure usually is "out of scope" on our plans.
Please try exploratory solutions! Biden and Buttigieg should help make things better in time.
@@NicholasLittlejohn We have a really good guide in NACTO and CROW. NACTO is being used in various cities and actually makes intuitive sense as reading through it seems like it would make safer streets.
Ask yourself why standards are not being updated?
@@rogerwilco2 Because AASHTO is the main planning code. I can’t remember the one that’s not as radical as NACTO, but better than AASHTO.
Cycling infrastructure is the cheapest form of infrastructure per mile when compared to Cars / Trains / Trams Subway / ect
My favorite type is the painted bike gutter full of large cracks beside 100 kph/60 mph traffic. The cyclists brave enough to ride on these have an epileptic warning amount of flashing beacons to try and ward off the instant death that would follow, and I don't blame them, crazy as they are.
That doesn’t exist right? That’s literal highway speed, I hope you’re exaggerating, but if you’re not, please find me an example.
@@lemonade4181 State Highway 2 in Wellington, New Zealand. 100 km/h speed limit, and the bike path is almost impossible to widen as there’s the sea on one side and a steep hill on the other.
@@pineappledoge8019 wow, you’re right it seems like they took the buffer zone at the edge of the highway and added some green paint
@@lemonade4181 I haven’t seen that, but in my hometown (of only 100k people), I’ve seen a bicycle “”lane”” (where they’re just sharing the shoulder of the road with cars) a 4-lane 45 mph speed limit stroad on a busy part of town. Tbf there’s few entrances to parking lots or side streets, but that only encourages drivers to go closer to 50 mph
@@lemonade4181 Same city as the video (Reno, NV): McCarran Blvd, in the southwest corridor, from Plumb to Plumas. Speed limit is 50 mph, however, there are few traffic lights and extremely long, steep sections (over 10% grade) where cars travel in excess of 60 mph (four lane, divided with only a narrow concrete barrier). Of course, in Nevada, cyclists can legally ride on Interstates outside of cities where speed limits are 80 mph!! I live (and ride daily) here in Reno. Better than many U.S. cities, but far, far from safe, and nothing like riding in Germany where I moved from.
When I lived in Pittsburgh, PA the mayor was attempting to encourage more cycling by building separated bike lanes. People lost their goddamn minds. They hated it, and the response used to make me so angry.
"You don't want me cycling the street, and you don't want separate bike lanes. It seems like what you do want is for me to not exist."
How dare you not make traffic jams worse and fill their lungs with pollution!
Yup it's pretty consistent with almost everything else. A largely deeply antisocial nature as standard, consistent with the punching down divide and rule brainwashing coming out of basically every TV and newspaper.
What's really wonderful about painted bike gutters is all the debris that accumulates in them which includes glass, screws, nails, boards and the occasional credit card.
Don't forget the occasional parked police car
Sometimes they even have bus stops as well
Thanks. My bike was my only form of transportation [except for buses when the snow was too deep] for a few decades when I lived in the District of Columbia. It isn't merely the lack of infrastructure; it's also the law and its interpretation. A biker was killed in the Georgetown neighborhood one day by a trucker who made an illegal turn. The judge refused the manslaughter charge and ruled that it was a "failure to yield." A child in Northern Virginia was injured by a motorist but the judge apologized in dismissing the suit against the motorist by saying the law at that time did not allow a non-motorist to sue. Much remains to be accomplished.
Yeah, if you really want safer cycling, more severe punishment for inattentive drivers would go a long way.
Yup... Bicyclists are speed bumps.
But seriously, how many laws do bicyclists break. I had one get mad at me a couple of weeks ago. I was driving on a two lane street. One lane in each direction. There was a separate bicycle lane separated from the roadway. I slowed down, put on my blinker, and put the car in reverse to back into a back-in angle parking spot. Some bicyclist came flying down the road and tried to go between me and the parking spot.
He got made at me? WTF. If he had not stopped, he would have been backed into. If he had been a car, he would have had to stop. He should have been riding in the separate bicycle lane.
Bike Na Zis think they own the road. They are really just speed bumps.
Great video. One major reason not to mix bikes and cars in with a bike gutter is where all the trash ends up in gutter damaging bikes. Always worth mentioning.
My son lives in Reno, close to McCarren Blvd which is heavily shown in your video. I've ridden my bike on that "bike lane" on McCarren and it is probably the most unpleasant biking experience I have every had. I don't care what the speed limit is on McCarren as in reality it's a freeway with traffic signals. Reno bike infrastructure sucks. As a result, nobody rides on the roads.
Yes, McCarran is a high traffic throughfare that should have dedicated separated paths along it's entire circumference. (For the non-locals, McCarran is the very useful ring road encircling Reno/Sparks.)
I agree. I feel like I'm about to die every time I ride my bike on a bike gutter
Let's also reframe the notion of road "ownership". Roads were in place long before cars, and bicycles proliferated streets during that era. An era that lasted more than a century.
It was only over this last hundred years that we have turned over nearly all roadways to automobiles.
"yeah but cars pay taxes that cover about 1/4th of the cost of car infrastructure whereas bikes don't, even though the people cycling also contribute to that 3/4ths that cars don't pay"
Also, mind about countering with "I'm sure cyclists would be happy to pay taxes if that means good cycling infrastructure". They might just take you up on the taxes part, and then conveniently forget the infrastructure part. Just demand good cycling infrastructure.
The Dutch didn't get their infrastructure by accident either. They got it through long lasting concerted advocacy, by organizations such as "stop child murder". Yeah we went there.
@@alex2143 You missed the point entirely; many of these roads were constructed long before cars existed.
And cars don't pay taxes, motorists do.
@@jasonarthurs3885 i agree with you. Just want to add that motorists don't even pay nearly enough taxes to cover for the cost of the infrastructure that's specifically designed for them, so car infrastructure is heavily subsidized by, among others, cyclists.
@@alex2143 Agreed!
Roads were constructed long before the bike as well mate, interesting point to bring up
Dude, I can't believe how much footage you got of terrible bike infrastructure. I chuckled at the bike gutter that was too narrow for the bike symbol.
Good video BTW.
As someone who has biked in Reno, I can believe every second of footage that he was able to get (plus a lot more).
@@smileyeagle1021 Yep. And I enjoy it. Most of the time. But none of my family is willing to bike with me. And that's totally reasonable. Even where there is good infrastructure, it ends without notice, dumping cyclists into vehicular travel lanes. Oh, and there's a "bike route" downtown with stairs! Seriously!
Adam, you should see some of the bike lanes here in Santiago, Chile. Some of them are too narrow for a bike to even fit in. Your handlebars end up being outside the lane!
Heck, even a "good" bike gutter is still the width (tire-to-tire) of an average car. Town I live in got a redesign of a main artery road some years ago, sacrificed one side of parking for a bike lane on each side. It may not be "good" bike infrastructure but it's still better than the NO bike infrastructure that the road had previously.
@@Stratelier
I’m curious if the new bike lane attracts more riders. And whether the number of car/bike collisions has fallen.
I love how there's typically 3-4 lanes (in one direction) for cars next to a 3 foot bike gutter on low-use suburban roads.
The city I live in took formerly 6 lane wide roads and reduced them down to a single narrow lane in each direction with 5mph speed bumps. The 4 lanes that were removed were turned into bicycle parking, and pedestrian space.
another problem with the gutters is that they get often filled with pebbles, leaves, fallen branches and other types of trash coming from the road 💩
This and the typically narrow lane is often divided in two by a seam between the asphalt and concrete that is often dangerous to cross, so you're not even safe maneuvering within the bike lane to avoid all this debris and often road damage.
good bike infrastructure and good transit should be build because of safety and economic reasons , oil is at 110 this mourning , and people are still using cars to make 2 miles to get to school or the shopping mall , this is madness .
Let's hope oil gets so expensive that nobody can buy it, so Saudi Arabia collapses and the people of Yemen can live in peace.
Death to the automobile!
Good transit can be justified as military expense like the highway infrastructure, but good bike infrastructure is something that comes as more people choose not to walk because it's not as efficient compared to biking.
Who is going to ride their bike to get groceries? Where are you going to carry those? What about the upper Midwest with four or five months of snow a year? You are living in a fantasy in your mind.
@@scottjohnson921 Cargo bikes exist
@@scottjohnson921 in any given population you'll get a solid percentage, maybe up to 10-20% . Dutch population one of he only exceptions where it's closer to 50%
I just wanted to mention that in European countries where roads are typically narrower and there aren't many stroads, vehicular cycling is totally normal and even children can do it. Yes, separate bike infrastructure is always nice to have, but good road design would go a long way.
I want to mention one thing: Copenhagen is often mentioned as one of the greatest cycling cities in the world. I visited the city, along with its swedish neighbor Malmö, this month. Copenhagen has some great pieces of bike infrastructure and a lot of people (who are all seemingly in a hurry) use it.
But there is one design feature that baffles me. Most streets have a kerb protected bike lane along its route, which is great. However, these lanes often drop down to street level and create a mixed bike/right turn lane, which seems horrendously dangerous. As a cyclist, you have the comfort and safety of being separated from both cars and pedestrians in your own lane, but then at intersections, where you need that protection the most, it just goes away and you are dumped into right turning car traffic, which includes buses and trucks.
I was surprised to see that Malmö has way better cycling infrastructure than Copenhagen. Seriously, Malmö dedicates way more space to cyclists and every intersection that accomodates bikes does so incredibly well, on par with the ones seen in the Netherlands, whereas Copenhagen has so many rough edges that I don't understand why it's getting so much praise. Copenhagen is certainly better than many other cities across the world, but I see it as above average rather than world class.
I think this is mostly because Copenhagen is easy to copy with little political will for actual change. Just need a little paint, ignore the difficult bits (junctions), and you're not too far off.
How Copenhagen is listed as more bicycle friendly than ANY Dutch city is truly beyond me. Those mixed turning lanes would never fly in the Netherlands.
Whats crazy is getting on the road, regardless with which vehicle, and expecting to just ride straight while day dreaming for 20 minutes. Doesn't happen, let alone in a goddamn city are you nuts? You expect them to build bike lanes 10 feet above the buildings with lifts to get up and down? It CANT happen! Deal with the fact that the road is for everyone and you will have to mix with motorised vehicle traffic inevitably. Is it really that difficult to turn your head to the road and see if someone is coming into the turning lane, respectively is it that difficult to read the signage on the ground to know who between the car and the bike will be allowed to enter first? Again it's a city, you are subjected to numerous more difficult manoeuvres and dilemmas than simply merging with a bicycle that measures 50 centimeters in width...
If you want to feel complete by biking at 5 kmh in the sun, then sure you may feel the desire to seperate traffic flows extensively. If you just wanna get around, then what do you care if you can ride outside the road or on the road with cars, as long as you get to your destination. I mean if you're biking anyways, it obviously already has an upperhand, be it the price or the speed (urban setting) or the exercise, so just do it, pay attention like everyone is supposed to and get to where you need to be. You dont need a clean seperate snd entire bike system to convince yourself to ride a bicycle lmao
@@blanco7726 the issue is that cycling in traffic results in lots of very angry, inconsiderate people in 2ton metal machines flying past you with no distance. It's extremely dangerous and causes frequent deaths. Wouldn't be a problem if pedestrians also just walked along the middle of the road forcing cars to slow down, but I don't know what your stance on jaywalking is.
I guess you could consider me a vehicular cyclist. When I was growing up and a young adult, there was no bike infrastructure to be found anywhere. I lived in a more rural/small town area and if you wanted to ride your bike somewhere you just shared the road with cars most of the time, using shoulders when available and safe enough. Later, I used my bicycle to commute to work while in college, on city streets, again with zero infrastructure. Back then the advice was to learn hand signals, occupy the lane when turning left, things like that. I did that and I was fairly comfortable with it.
What strikes me about these painted bike lanes is that -- as a "vehicular cyclist" -- there's a lot of them I would flat-out refuse to ride in. They put me in mind of the narrow shoulders with sharp drop-offs you find on a lot of higher-speed rural roads (as opposed to the really rural roads with no shoulders at all), where you'd have to be suicidal to try to ride there. They're the worst of every world. You're far enough off to the side that a distracted driver won't necessarily notice you, but you're not able to be far enough off to the side to be safe from those same distracted, line-hugging drivers. In situations like that I would always, always ride a couple of feet into the road. Far enough that people coming up behind me in cars were more likely to notice me, while leaving some actual room to move over to the right if someone was nevertheless getting too close, without risking hitting the edge of the pavement and crashing. And these stupid painted lines are saying to bicyclists: here's where you belong! Oh heck no.
Great video! I cycle occasionally to do errands around my neighborhood, and primarily take public transit. I have been a bit amazed with how quickly I got comfortable taking the lane and riding with traffic, but it’s still somewhat terrifying every time. I just hate how much of a risk I have to take to cycle anywhere. I refuse to go certain places that have those awful dotted bike lanes to the left of the turn lanes, right near high speed highway entrances. We really need infrastructure that safely separates us from cars, because like you said no human is perfect, and making a mistake at 40mph can kill someone
I just found this channel, and I’m happy I did. I’ve begun trying to research the best ways to advocate for protected bike lanes in my city. Some places in my city where there are these painted bike lanes, sometimes they just disappear, mid road, in the middle of nowhere. As if they expect a bicyclist to just spawn there, since it isn’t connected to a store or anything at all
I used to work at a bike shop in Texas. It was my first job and I was 14. So it wasn't just my job, it was also my only transportation option for many years.
I _WISH_ badly designed bike lanes was the biggest threat to a cyclist in texAss. People are such pricks there, you can get killed riding a bike. I've had garbage, cans, bottles, shoes, and other crap like that thrown at me. I've had people try to grab my clothes or take swings at me from their cars when they drive by, like they don't know they would break their arm punching somebody at 35mph. Eventually just I stopped riding anywhere near stroads and road through huge grassy areas instead. But they got wise to it and even started driving their cars through the grass just to get to me. Luckily I was faster on a bike in the grassy areas than they were in their cars. These people are actual murderers.
To put it bluntly, I only rode a bike if I was feeling brave. I had way less people trying to hurt me when I walked, but even then it still happened. Not a single day goes by where I'm not thankful to be out of that shithole. Fuck texAss. They deserve whatever hell on earth they create for themselves. I hope they all kill each other.
Yeah, that a huge chuck of the American populace thinks a person on a bike is not human, that's the real problem. I've often thought that we should require a person to be struck by a car before giving them a driver's license. You know, maybe 25mph so that you break a few bones. So that they MIGHT catch a clue that a 4,000 piece of steel can hurt other people.
@@bikebudha01 @techmouse-kx5kz
hang in there fellow bikers. You matter. Wishing you all health, safety, and peace. Keep fighting for a future eco friendly, clean, with more empathy for humans lives, more sharing and less selfishness.
@@bikebudha01, nah, I think they should have to commute by bike for at least a month (ideally three) before getting a license. There's nothing like cycling to teach you situational awareness, stopping distances in different weather conditions, defensive riding, etc. You'd also have way better bike infrastructure if this were the case, lol.
I think riding a bike down a road along with cars is one of the most stressful things you can do in a city. And that's saying something
One of my favorite bike “lanes” goes through cars merging on and off the highway on either side of you. On the other side, you have to move over to avoid the highway entry lane while praying that no one will try to pass you or swipe your arm as you signal :) And yet, I used to ride through it everyday to work when I was 18 because the sidewalk crossing there was awkward and less convenient than riding through directly. Probably wouldn’t do it now though.
When you can't even afford decent road maintenance (potholes), will there be resources to resurface existing roads and overhaul the roads to implement decent cycle infrastructure?
Talking about road maintenance, where I live there are signs along the roads that urge people to report spots that need maintenance. Since we don't have potholes the signs say: See a lose or uneven tile on the sidewalk, call now!
It is important to realise that the owner of the road (local or higher government) is liable for any damages that are the result from poor road maintenance.
Yeah, you guessed it, I live in the Netherlands. 🤗
I used to live in Helena, Montana, and city officials were SO PROUD of their new painted bike lanes, and they had surveyors out asking what we (as bikers) thought of them. I told them that they were worthless, because paint does not protect you from cars and trucks! They were so disappointed in my answer, that they looked as if I had punched them in the gut. They obviously didn’t bother to ask bikers beforehand what WE thought would make bike travel safer in the city!
I live in Santiago, Chile, and we also have terrible bike lanes. A while ago there was a story about a new bike lane opening up in some random area, and there was a photo showing how the police attended the opening. Guess where they parked their car? Literally in the middle of the bike lane!
Yeah, it's hard... A lot of cities started with painted bike gutters and you don't want to totally demoralize the officials because then the people who had to fight to get even that might not be willing to fight to upgrade them to tubular separators and then to cement separators down the line. But you do also have to make it clear that this alone isn't enough and you need them to keep fighting to improve the infrastructure because you don't feel safe unless traffic is also calmed.
It costs almost nothing to build the road with a raised bike lane at the same level as the sidewalk, it's literally just a different arrangement, they really don't give a fuck and is just using some copy paste guide from a traffic construction manual. These roads are just disguised wannabe freeways.
I have been doing rehabilitation for the past 18 months due to being hit by a car on painted bicycle lanes - they are not just atrocious, they are a lie, misleading and deceptive virtue-signalling that helps no one!
Helps you more than '''''protected''''' bike lanes taht box you in
@@SuperRat420 did you watch the video?
@@bradleys05 yup and I actually ride, so I would know
@@bradleys05 protected bs are for LARPers who just think about riding.
@@SuperRat420 what?
This is why I just use sidewalks when biking in US many cities (except the dense urban cores though). These bike "lanes" are just so randomly-placed, inefficient, and outright dangerous if the speed limit is above 20 mph. I'm aware of the many dangers with biking on sidewalks with pedestrians and curb cuts, but most sidewalks are empty, wide, actually grade-separated for protection, and fairly well connected.
In my option bikers are pedestrians and sharing the road is down right stupid. Bike hitting walker most likely minor injury, car blearily hitting biker high risk of death or life changing injury.
@@Zucr_Bicycles are most definitely not pedestrians. They are much faster and can't turn the same way a pedestrian can. They share vulnerability against fast heavy motor traffic. Similar to sidewalks there should be bicycle lanes or streets hostile to fast motor traffic such as the street can be shared safely.
@@Anders127 I mean if you want to be a literalist then by all means... My point is that a bike is vastly closer to a pedestrian than a vehicle, If you had to put them in the same bucket (on the road vs off the road). Its really not even a comparison. In most areas the side walk is empty anyways.
Since i got a Ebike here in the LA suburban area, i've put about 1000 miles on the bike. I haven't ridden a bike since a kid, but am pretty avid at how to stay safe on the road. Since the ebike can reach speeds close to 30mph, i stay in the street but some times i get forced into the sidewalk. I find that riding here at least, your going to want and need to get on the sidewalk at some points or else you'll have raging cars speeding 20mph over the limit to pass you. It's crazy how pissed off cars get when you come next to them on a light. Some times my ebike can actually accelerate faster then some of these cars and reach the next light (red light) faster then them, but they speed past me hitting their rev limiter because they think i'm a nuisance.
Cars are an ego problem
Thumbing this up without even watching it. Can’t really right now, but as soon as I can, it’s at the top of my watch list.
As a vehicular cyclist, I refer to automobiles as "two ton killing machines." While I love being in traffic and would be happy with more painted bike lanes, I agree that bicycle commuting should be made safer and easier so as to make it more accessible to more people.
Thank you. I don't feel safe with only a line on the road separating me from cars passing by.
I used to think cross walks were safer for crossing signaled intersections but riding in car dependent areas has changed my mind. People in car dependent places do not look out for pedestrians crossing and they absolutely do not yield to pedestrians when the driver has a green light. In these conditions, crossing intersections in a car lane increases visibility and drivers will actually yield to you.
Thank you so much for these videos!
I love your videos! This one and the video about restricted independent mobility really resonated. It's really common where I live to find unprotected, painted on bike lanes alongside roads with a 50 mph speed limit. For a 20-ish minute walk to the nearest grocery store, one whole section of the walk I have to share with a bike lane (that some drivers still park on!). It's absolutely ridiculous and now that it's been brought to my attention I can't help but notice flaws like these everywhere I go.
We have lanes like this everywhere in European cities BUT the traffic is used to them and the speed is pretty low at 30-50kmh. But this...
This is like I'd put a bike lane on the city autobahn in Berlin (where speed is usually 70-90) and call it safe.
Same. I'm looking at this thinking, is it because our lanes are green that they're safer? I get it, paint isn't infrastructure, but both my decade of commuting by bike, and my year of driving, I've never encountered people just totally and utterly disregarding cycle lanes completely. Like, why would they come out of their car lane anyway?
I feel generally safe on the green painted cycle lanes, but I also think that they're only used on roads where its appropriate in the UK. If its any road above 30mph in town, then it will probably have a pedestrian/cycle path completely separate from the road.
I've seen similar design in Belgium. I was riding a rout for the first time and trusted google. Cars were supposed to go 70 km/h but they went closer to 100 on a 3 lane road. To my right trucks were placed. There was only paint between me and the cars and the strip was very narrow. Heard they are changing it. Never felt so fragile while on a bike.
The most frustrating thing about this kind of bike “infrastructure” is that the Dutch have already figured all of this out. There’s no reason to reinvent the wheel. We know how to fix it.
As an urban biker, this is so spot on
I’m an experienced cyclist and I ride my bike almost everyday and I agree with you that painted bicycle gutters is not really infrastructure. I ride my bike a lot in Moya boulevard and other streets in Reno, the speed limit is 45 mph and cars go pretty fast on that road.
I’ll bet none of them is going 45
They're building some new bike routes in my town. One part was a nice path off the road that was less than an 8th of mile long and spits you out to a "bike lane" which is actually the skinny shoulder of a busy, hilly, winding road with a 45mph speed limit. What's the point of the new path if it leads to a dangerous biking route almost immediately? I hope they eventually expand the path but idk if they will.
I'm a vehicular cyclist. It is the only way to ride a bike where I live if you actually wanna go to places with your bike.
I've rode a bike like that everywhere for years without getting hit by any car except once, one getting out of a parking space.
Near misses though, well, everyday has one or more near misses. But it's always just near. If they hit me though, I'd be likely dead.
I've took the decision to stop riding a bike and buying a car recently, excatly because of this huge life risk that it is riding a bicycle everyday through traffic.
It's sad, it's unhealthy (to stop biking), but it is for my own security.
Another concern would be in bad visibility such as rain or fog. What if a driver can't see that the side of the road is also a bike lane?
I feel like a big problem with this is due to the roads, when you’ve got 4 or more lanes painted bike paths aren’t good because it would be dangerous, and bike lanes on smaller roads are unnecessary due to the small size and slower traffic along with the lower amount of cars. If you want to have bike lanes they should be separate from the main road lanes with ramps to allow you onto the tarmac if need be. In my town, we have large pavements with one half being for people and the other half being painted in green for bike lanes on main roads, with each side being nearly the full size of a typical pavement, and in smaller roads you can choose to ride on the pavement or on the tarmac based off which one has the most traffic. It’s not ideal and there aren’t bike routes everywhere but it’s better than the system here, I would prefer to have proper bike lanes separated from the main roads, with pavements as a back up where traffic is low and roads are small.
Excellent video. You showed all of the important facts. Straight to the point!
watching these kinds of videos are always kind of sureal because I live in the netherlands. But they also make me realise that the netherlands still has a long way to go. We only started most of our safety and bike first practices in the 1950s and 70s. We still have a lot of these terrible bike paths and I had to ride one daily to my highschool for ±5 years untill it got changed about 4 years ago. Making walkable/non-car comunities is a continuous struggle but I love that the whole world is waking up to who can be the centre of infastructure. Keep up the good work!
I cycle. I much prefer a "painted gutter" over no cycle lane on a 45 mph road.
Talk is cheap. Yet talk is cheaper than paint -- and that is exactly what my city does to address bike safety. They roll out the city cops to deliver lectures on bike safety. Anything but spend money on safe bike paths.
They Need Protected Bike Lanes With Barriers And Have A Shoulder For Emergency Parking In All Cities
3:03 this bikeway isn't even clean and the water drainage gate is parallel to the wheels of the bikes' wheels which can definitely cause a crash
Those should be banned and are a liability, could sue the city
With the exception of the centers of large cities, the USA is designed for cars, not people.
Even the large cities have plenty of room for improvement. I live in Chicago and the city thinks a painted bike Kane is “bike infrastructure.” We could easily be a leader in safe bike infrastructure given our density and land use patterns in many parts of the city. We’re also pretty flat and have a decently small bike culture in spite of the crappy conditions.
@@LoveToday8 - there is definitely room for improvement, but that is happening in NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, Dallas, and even LA.
I find it a real shame!! that the US is designed for cars and not people. Not everybody can drive or want to and that forces lower income and even middle income people to pay many years of car payments. Also it would be easier to get fitness levels better if we could bicycle or walk more just to do a regular errands like bicycle or walk to grocery.
When I used to live and work overseas in northern Europe I often bicycled to meet my friends in the city or bicycled to the grocery if I just needed a small amount of things I had to bike bags on my bicycle my overall fitness level was much better then and I never went to a gym.
Yet Another Urbanist: "while filming, I found this especially weird one."
Me, remembering he films in Reno: "how did I know that intersection was going to come up"
Truly, South Meadows is the worst neighborhood in the city for biking (I'm so happy I moved from South Meadows to Northwest Reno, still not great, but at least nowhere near as bad).
bike lanes in Reno are a joke lol, the ones on major roads like McCarran are extremely dangerous since you're totally unprotected and next to cars routinely driving over 60mph
I live less than 6 miles from my doctor's office. I could easily bike in in half an hour, but instead I spend an hour on the bus, because even though it takes twice as long, it doesn't involve me having to bike on McCarran, which is quite frankly terrifying.
They should reduce the speed limit to lower pollution too
I only had to get hit in the shoulder by truck mirrors twice before deciding to ride on the sidewalk instead
It's not just the US. I live in Romania and in my city the older administration did the exact same thing with bike lanes. They took the outskirts of the road and "transformed" into a 50 cm wide bike lane. That part of the road is where you have manholes, asphalt burr, potholes etc. You are riding along speeding vehicles that can suck you into the traffic if they go by fast enough. The scariest part is when buses pass next to you at an intersection and you don't know if they will cut your way or run you over. Then you have cars parked with their rear protruding onto the "bike lanes", forcing you to jump into the traffic to avoid them, or irresponsible drivers opening their car doors right as you approach them. Riding on the boardwalks is illegal here, riding along with the cars is scary and dangerous, especially at peak hours when all the "bisons" (as we call them) speed at traffic lights, stops and intersections. Whenever getting on your bike here you're taking a big risk on your life.
Putting a painted bike gutter on a road where the speed limit is over 35 mph is not good. When the speed limit is 40 mph drivers are doing 60.
For real!!! Especially on these wide stroads in suburban areas they just encourage 55+ plus mph and to think a bike can fit alongside 2 ton metal cages?! Ridiculous.
I'd cap painted gutters at 30 MPH
To your last point, I'd argue an even more extreme version of that statement. The risks for walking and cycling should always be significantly lower than driving since bikes and pedestrianism inherently create far less risk than driving. If we put the proper amount of care into infrastructure both should always be safer than being in an environment with multitone chunks of metal moving at over 50km/h. If you're doing something risky you should bear the brunt of that risk, not random other people around you who have chosen modes that induce far less risk overall.
Ya stay off the roads
I got really distracted by the "Right lane must turn right". That says there are people who don't use that lane the way it's intended to.
Great video. I'm in San Diego, and my "favorite" are bike lanes with the bike sign pained in the middle of the lane in such a way that it is raised about an inch making the bike jerk and the bicyclist lose control over the bike if not extra careful. I'd like to talk to the genius who decided it was a good idea to raise the marking instead of just painting it flat.
As a bicyclist I could not agree with you more. Everything you said I have experienced and seen as well.
As someone who’s paralyzed and on a wheelchair, your everything correct
Jersey City used paint to rapid build bike lanes, but they used the Dutch design manual to do it. Within a year it became one of the safest cities in the country to cycle in. The paint was considered a temporary emergency measure to keep people from dying, and 2 years later they have been going back and installing concrete barrier between ALL bike lanes and car lanes in the city to improve safety. The state of NJ also made it illegal to get less than 4 feet from any road use, such as cyclists, with a motor vehicle, it’s illegal to pass them going more than 25mph unless it’s a separate marked lane, so any of those dangerous passes mentioned are explicitly illegal. On roads without separate cycle lanes it’s illegal to pass a cyclist if it’s illegal to pass a car and you are required by law to slow down to the cyclists speed, or come to a complete stop. They started installing “super sharrows” where the entire width of the lane is painted green, to indicate the car is in a cyclists space, not the other way around.
Paint can be used to help cyclists, but only if what you are painting is laid out to Dutch standards, and it’s a temporary measure until permanent concrete protection is installed.
US design standards need to be thrown away and replaced by the Dutch design standards. They've already perfected the standards and made them freely available, why reinvent the wheel with standards that are unsafe and just plain don't work in the real world? I wish this video was required precursor training for any city and county urban design board. Great work!
Having a bike lane adjacent to the road is like having a road adjacent to the train tracks. With the road barely able to fit a car, and the train not guided by the tacks but instead able to swirl left or right, and also with trains going one after another and not every few minutes.
A recent study in Sweden showed that major cities (population >50000) had a more thought-thru planning of infrastructure for cyclists, whereas smaller cities don’t.
In our town, I often get frustrated how bad the planning is and I am eager to see the result of the bike lanes along the major street in town. It’s a 1/4 mile stretch that will signal how great our place is to accommodate cyclists.
On the plus side, there are some great stretches of bike lanes between towns and villages, separated from roads; one runs on an old railway embankment, another through “wilderness” and a golf course and others physically, by barriers, next to roads.
There aren’t that many “painted gutters”, but more often pedestrians and cyclists share a common lane separated by ….. a white painted line 🙄.
Great video btw👍
fortunately for me most of my riding is done out in the country roads around my town, 1 or 2 lanes (all bad potholes and patches). but the lanes in the town were "improved" but still not great. like someone said below, our green painted bike lanes are nothing but dirt and gravel collectors, that you practically need a gravel bike to ride them, and one green painted bike lane/gutter goes right into at least one drain, that has large openings that are parallel to the bike wheel so anything under a 2 inch wide mountain bike tire and you hit that you're eating the gravel., lol. When i do have to go through town it's more nerve racking than all the wildlife i have to deal with out in the woods. Ohh and hello from Willits, CA and thanks Reno for the sign!
When riding my bike next to a big, dumb stroad, even when empty of big, dumb vehicles, the wind can be horrible. Big empty spaces create wind
Preach 🙏🙏 love the content 🔥
Meanwhile those wide empty unused Reno sidewalks look like a comparatively safe place to cycle.
True enough. But sadly, they're not entirely standard. Some new sidewalks in the area are still constructed at 3' (1 meter) wide or less. That's not wide enough for two Americans to comfortably pass each other. (Insert joke about obesity/personal space/etc)
Sidewalks should be reserved for the disabled
@@NicholasLittlejohn whenever I use a sidewalk for anything other than walking, I always yield for those who are walking or in wheelchairs.
I find it sad how I fall in love with these repainted shoulder lanes as it's quite hard to get around maryland unless it's super early in the morning
I live in Southern California and for a long time thought it impossible to find a place for bicycles within the existing infrastructure. The roads here make up an endless grid of highly trafficked streets. But in between the large arteries are smaller usually residential streets. I don't think it would be impossible to designate some of these smaller streets bikeways and close them to cars with the obvious exception for local residents. I think almost any local resident would be happy to gain some bikes and have less automobile traffic.
We need more protected bike lanes, especially here in California. Good video!
A lot of the problem comes from the fact that many people consider bicyclists as second-class citizens. As a result, bicycle-friendly infrastructure often comes about as an afterthought, if it exists at all. In fact, a recent study in Australia suggested that many motorists look at bicyclists as ranking not much above a common cockroach (no, that was not an exaggeration). Until that attitude changes, these issues aren't going away anytime soon.
Having been seriously injured by a turning car ten years ago, whilst in a painted cycle lane, I now tend to ride outwith them to make myself more visible. I do like a kerb between myself and a car.
These are just so strange to me, it seems so foolish. If the space for a bike lane isn’t the problem, why not make it any kind of raised/protected lane? Where I live in England, most of our bike paths are raised to pavement height. (Sometimes with a slight slope to make entering and exiting the lane easier), and they’re often semi-shared spaces. A common layout is a single width bike lane and a pedestrian “lane” of the same width (or slightly larger), and you stay in your own space unless you need to use the other space to pass. It’s not perfect, but it’s a lot better than a painted gutter, you get some form if protection, and it makes good use of space, in areas where a full size cycle path isn’t possible it’s good enough, providing bike and pedestrian traffic isn’t too high.
It just really boggles the mind that rather than something like that America just paints lanes in the middle of high speed roads.
Why do North American city planners and civil engineers even bother? Just contract the work to designers from the Netherlands.
The current state of bicycle infrastructure as it stands in most North American cities is like having to travel on a very long and really thin 3-foot wide slab of concrete pathway sandwiched between two sets of Heavily Active railroad tracks is how I feel about having to share roadways with heavy machinery!
I am a frequent cyclist, do 99% of my shopping with the bicycle and I like the painted lines. If I'm on a separate bike lane, I'm often enough closer to pedestrians with their very erratic movement patterns, at crossings incoming cars will cross the bike lane - often without looking for bikes - winter service is generally bad on bike lanes, so my safety is compromised much more than cars passing at one meter distance. In Italy trucks will generally give you a warning honk to prepare you for the wind gust.
Now I have been very much annoyed by car drivers - on roads w/o bike lane markings - who want you off the road as their very own property and I have enjoyed - very expensive - bike lanes separated by a tree line but dare you wish to do a left turn into a smaller road, this is often not supported and you will to pedal on for hundreds of meters and the back track on the other side.
Drawing the literal and figurative line is a cheap and quick solution, to facilitate both sides cooperating.
On narrow roads where full bike lanes are not feasible this often the only sensible solution. And a cheap solution now is better than millions on solutions that will be ready ten years from now, will make car drivers even more hateful and face it is just more land put under asphalt.
Im from Germany and riding a bike here feels often like a fight with cars, but in the U.S. it just looks like suicide
Paint is not infrastructure, but : my town did a painted infrastructure for two summers, with some cement blocks, to test out some different configurations for an intersection. They found out that their first two scenarios had issues, they repainted it, and once it was fixed, they implemented it permenantly when they did road work on that street (changed the utilities line that were for some parts over 100 years old).
I am a vehicular cyclist. Most of the footage in this video is of long stretches of highway, where separated bike paths would probably be safer. But I live in an urban area where intersections, parking lots, and driveways are everywhere. Riding on the sidewalk, or a separated bike path if it existed, is dangerous here. I see people on bikes roll into intersections without even looking, assuming that they are pedestrians and that drivers will wait for them. People on sidewalks also often ride in the opposite direction of traffic, which means that they approach intersections from the opposite direction from where drivers are looking. I have even witnessed a head-on collision between two people on bikes on a sidewalk. I am not a fan of painted bike gutters either. In my location I believe it is best to follow the rules of the road and be a part of traffic. That is the best way to ensure that cyclists and drivers are aware of each other and can anticipate where they are going. Yes, it takes more skill and a fair amount of confidence, but I think it is the safest way to ride. I have ridden over 10,000 miles on city streets with only one accident when a car pulled out from a side street into my path and kept going even after I ran into it. Luckily I was not hurt.
The space is already there in most places, just need to rearrange them. Instead of cars | bike | parking | sidewalk | trees it should be cars | parking | trees | bike lane | sidewalk.
The biggest problem where I live as far as bike lanes is that even if they did a protected bike lane on the stroads where they shoved gutters, there are still just way too many driveways and conflict points to contend with. The solution there would I guess be to consolidate this stuff, but that would take a ton of money and political capital that I think is probably better spent elsewhere
These are the situations where traffic filters and stitching back roads together with bicycle/pedestrian only short-cuts can solve the problem. Just leave the stroad to cars and setup a separate route for bicycles and slow-local traffic.
A passing car feels like a gun to the back of your head.
I find it very difficult to navigate those bike lanes that are painted green as you approach an intersection. Are cars turning right allowed to drive on the section that is painted green?
Just look at that wide, vacant safe sidewalk next to the road. No people on it, they're all riding in cars. That's where I'm going to ride, on that sidewalk. And if you do see a rare person walking, just slow down until you pass them.
They put pedestrians on sidewalks (sometimes- a lot of places don't even have sidewalks!!) b/c they are *vulnerable.* There's nothing on a bike protecting a person so they should be protected. Since bikes are usually at least somewhat powered by humans and bike riders are completely unprotected bikes are closer to pedestrians than to cars. I have absolutely no idea why they push bike riders onto streets with painted bike gutters. It's ridiculous. A collision with a pedestrian on a bike is pretty much gauranteed at most to be a hospital trip and a couple thousand dollar lawsuit for medical expenses at the very worst. *A collision with a person on a bike and a car can easily be a life threatening situation or death.*
It's time to give everyone the freedom of movement they deserve. Not just people who are able to, want to, and can afford to drive a car.
Close to where I live is some wide painted bike lane from nowhere to nowhere. Other than myself, for a few years, when I owned an electric tricycle, I've never seen a single cyclist on them.
Anecdotal, painting some roads suggests that where there isn't paint is not allowed for bikes. Also a step below paint is the "share the road" or "single file" sign... Probably saves so much time
I like the idea of totally separate areas for bicycles and have lived in a city (Folsom, CA) where there are such bike lanes throughout most of the city. It is wonderful to ride a bike there. But now I live near Boise Idaho and there is no room for such bike lanes other than along the Boise River. Many of the roads out away from town are old farm roads and you would have to take some property away from owners to put in proper bike lanes. I like to ride my bicycle, but there is no way I would commute on it from the formerly rural area where I now live.
Even Vienna, Austria, gets this so wrong so often.
3:25 There are many of these. They make sense at an intersection where the right lane is a turn lane so that bikers can have a designated (yes, I realize it's just paint) lane to be in if they are going straight (or even left). It's where they should be anyway if not turning right.
People talk about the independence of cars, but as long as i got food in my stomach, and know how yo fix my bike, i can ride my bike. Unless i am under threat to be hit by several tons of force...
I think that these gutters are being used willfully to set cyclists and motorists at each other..."look how unreasonable it is to have bike infrastructure". Colorado Springs suddenly started painting these, even downtown with myriad business entrances crossing them...even though Colorado Springs already had a well used, well liked network of off road bike paths spanning the city, for decades. I think that the car lobby has jumped on these bike gutters as a way of throwing sand in the tracks of the push for bike paths and pedestrian paths, trying to create friction and deaths.
The gas tax is similar. The car lobby doesn't want it large enough to deter driving, but wants to pretend that motorists are paying for, not destroying, the rights of way. Why would every administration talk about massive infrastructure bills if the gas tax were paying for roads? If it were, you'd just decide which projects to allocate that money to each year. Instead, enormous sums are pulled from general revenue (income taxes, etc.) to cover the massive, perpetual shortfall in gas tax revenue. We could never build the interstate highway system today with gas tax revenue, or even these infrastructure bills for that matter. So, no, motorists, including me, don't pay for the roads through gas tax. They do more damage than the gas tax pays for, witness all the cracks and potholes that the gas tax doesn't cover fixing.
What really frustrates me is that spaces are always dominated by either pedestrians or cars. A bike lane is either a painted traffic lane on the road, putting cyclists at risk of collisions with motor vehicles, or it's well protected enough that pedestrians consider it part of the footpath and it's dangerous to cycle faster than walking pace. I'm not sure what the solution is here.
There should be a dedicated infrastructure at key points (both North and South) around the city away from vehicle traffic, not just relegated to being along levees or some out of the way abandoned, hidden and potentially dangerous area! But places more likely to be frequented by many cyclists.
The issues are there with the bike gutter lane and hate going into Seattle and I do not ride bikes because of a physical disabilities so I am stuck driving a vehicle. One area that the bike riders need more caution with the bike gutter is at intersection where the bike riders are having to share the road and I have seen really poor understanding between bike riders and cars. We are at a traffic light with vehicles getting a right turn green arrow. A bike rider decides he is going to proceed straight even with vehicles having a green arrow. The bike rider had a trip to hospital as the bike rider came charging through the intersection with turning traffic. The car he hit he was blaming the driver for failure to yield. My dash camera proved otherwise as I witnessed it.
I do believe that the best thing is separate bike traffic from both pedestrian and vehicle traffic where it is feasible. I love to ride a bike but having had both knees replaced and a hip it is impossible for me.